10centcomics

Claim ToS 43, Batman 189, Avengers 12, and Avengers 43 per PM. Thank you!

I generally avoid Brittle but I can see myself making an exception for a megakey that would otherwise be out of reach. My All Star 3 has "Slightly Brittle" pages and that just means one isolated area of the book is flaking but the rest of the book is fine. I don't expect any further deterioration if I store it properly.

If CGC did away with different color labels for books and simply just listed defects and any restoration work on a standardized label, I bet restored books wouldn't be hit with as drastic a value reduction. And yes I wish everyone would stop the practice of scraping off CT. CGC should not "reward" this behavior with blue labels.

Generally if we are unsure of something, we should default to "uncredited" or "unknown." Older CGC labels of PL17 don't have the Matt Baker cover credit. I wonder when it changed and what evidence CGC saw that made them change their mind. I agree the value of PL17 isn't going to be swayed by the cover artist because it will always be a historic, infamous, and iconic book in the hobby. But attaching Matt Baker's name to a previously unknown book would certainly boost its value.

Yeah the spine is in really rough shape. I'd grade this 1.8. As someone else pointed out, it does contain the pin-up which is often missing so still worth a couple hundred of dollars if the rest of the book is complete.

The easiest way is to calculate the price per point of the actual sale and then extrapolate for your copy. So 1400/3.5 = 400. 400 x 5.5 = $2200. You can adjust upwards or downwards then based on page quality or eye appeal, etc. Price per point works okay for the low to mid grades. Higher grade books tend to have more of a premium as they are rarer. You can also take a look at the census and see how rare a 5.5 is. If 5.5 is the highest grade for the book, you can get away with more of a premium. Hope that helps.

Yep this is correct. The BP doesn't automatically show during the auction, you have to account for it yourself when you bid.

Yeah the displayed price has the 15% BP factored in already.

Yeah I can see VG if it were a simple spine split. The damage to the interior pages knocks it down to VG- or G/VG I think. Perhaps bug chew? Still a solid copy!

Oh yeah the foreign substance hammered the grade.

Ah yes my favorite topic! I don't think there is any possibility Baker drew this. Hair, eyes, hands, chest, and wooden pose all do not look like Baker's work. The heavy shadows and wrinkles on the shirt look like classic Al Feldstein. (Although in the The Art of Glamour there is an interview with Al Feldstein and he only recalls doing minor inks and backgrounds on Phantom Lady, not the covers) I'm not sure where the Baker attribution came from. I think there was some signed Baker interior Phantom Lady art and folks then just assumed he might've drawn the covers as well. This classic debate pops up from time to time in the Baker thread here. (I copied over some of my comments from there).

"Save on your purchase with our exclusive coupon code "FIRSTORDER10" Get a 10% discount when you spend over 3k$. Hurry, offer expires in 7 days. Shop now and enter the code at checkout." Offering discount codes on rare GA mega-keys. No way this was a legit sale. Seller has 0 feedback and created the account on August 9th?

An accumulation of lots of normal, honest wear and tear... 3.5!

If 200K magically appeared in your pocket, it would be a massive mistake not to get the Showcase 4. 200K also isn't enough for a 9.0+ Showcase 4. A 9.6 sold in 2009 for 180K. Not sure what census figures you are checking but none of the mid-run books are as rare as the early Showcases in 9.0 or above. As I mentioned earlier, Showcase 2 doesn't have anything higher than an 8.5 on the census. Even if the mid-run Showcases are as rare as you say they are, they likely won't experience the same price growth over the next decade of your collecting journey (well unless B'wana Beast has a hit Hollywood movie), which is why all the experienced collectors in this thread are imploring you to start with the keys first. For the non-keys, it is also likely there are many raw nice copies that haven't been graded yet so the census is less representative of the entire population of the book. I say keep doing what you're doing with the non-keys, it's fun to build momentum and check off acquisitions from the want list. But at the same time, you should have a plan for what you're gonna do with the earlier mega-keys. Procrastinating on that will make it financially out of reach in the future. You can get a low-grade but well-presenting copy of Showcase 4 for under $10,000 today. That's obviously still a ton of money but something realistic if you save up or sell off other books in your collection. Good luck!

Yeah in the The Art of Glamour there is an interview with Al Feldstein and he only recalls doing minor inks and backgrounds on Phantom Lady, not the covers. So the mystery continues...

Hair, eyes, hands, chest, and wooden pose all do not look like Baker's work. The heavy shadows and wrinkles on the shirt look like classic Al Feldstein. I'm not sure where the Baker attribution came from. I think there was some signed Baker interior Phantom Lady art and folks then just assumed he might've drawn the covers as well?

Yeah I'll take it a step further with Phantom Lady 17 and confidently say Baker did not draw that cover. Does not look like anything else he has done.

There is some doubt about that one. In The Art of Glamour, there is a footnote that says it could be an Iger Studio artist swiping Baker's style.

It would only be a 0.5 if you threw away the detached pages and the book was incomplete This looks to be a 2.0 to me.

I was the buyer last August. Sweet vindication with this recent sale! The two look good together though right?

I audibly gasped when I saw the grade. This was the furthest I've ever been off!

I mentioned in my post that Showcase No. 2 doesn't exist in 9.0 or higher (here's a link to the census:https://www.cgccomics.com/census/grades_standard.asp?title=Showcase&issue=2&publisher=D.C.+Comics&year=1956&issuedate=5-6/56) I guess we could hope for a raw one to turn up one day but I'm not holding my breath. Regarding the "challenge" of collecting, I agree with that sentiment but I would argue that a full run of Showcase in ANY grade would be a monumental collecting achievement, and out of reach for the vast majority of collectors. Adding the 9.0 minimum grade requirement on top of that makes the entire endeavor almost impossible.